First do no harm

The untimely death of the legendary Joan Rivers during a routine procedure took the world by surprise, including her close knit family. “The city’s medical examiner found that Joan Rivers died of brain damage due to lack of oxygen after she stopped breathing during the endoscopy. Her death was classified as a therapeutic complication”. Melissa Rivers has filed a lawsuit with the Manhattan Supreme Court alleging incompetence on behalf of the doctors, and seeks unspecified damages. According to the lawsuit the doctors mishandled this procedure, and performed a separate procedure without the consent of the patient or her family. Concern was expressed during the procedure in regards to Rivers’ breathing, this concern went unaddressed.

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Quit monkeying around

A unique case is taking place in the court of  appeals in New York, it is about whether chimpanzees are entitled to “legal personhood”. The defendant is 26-year-old Tommy, who is owned by a human and lives alone in what is described as a “dark, dank shed” in upstate New York. Tommy currently lives alone in a cage in a warehouse in Gloversville, New York. In December, Steven Wise, founder and president of  the Nonhuman Rights Project, filed writs of habeas corpus on behalf of four chimpanzees he believed were wrongfully detained. Wise compared chimps to human children when Presiding Justice Karen Peters asked him about how novel his theory really was. “Hey, I’m no animal rights freak, but if we’re extending the legal fiction of corporate personhood to include religious rights, we should at least give a creature with a 99 percent DNA match the right to not be locked in a shed. The standard really isn’t that onerous. If the courts fails to get this done  and based on the oral argument that seems likely  legislatures should take action to protect these creatures. But I wouldn’t hold my breath for that either.”

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Drive sober

A recent court ruling out of Kansas will likely lead to important changes in the way drunk driving cases are handled in the state. For years, law enforcement agencies have conducted a series of three field sobriety tests during traffic stops involving suspected drunk drivers. The failure of any one of the three tests could serve as justification for administering a breathalyzer test and for potentially making an arrest. Thanks to the Kansas Supreme Court, that will no longer be the case.

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Second opinion please…

Dr. Fatrid Fata, a prominent Michigan Internist has plead guilty to 16 counts of fraud and money laundering. Dr Fata fraudulently told healthy patients they had cancer to make money off insurance. Dr Fata would administer cancer drugs to patients who did not need them and ending up injuring and killing several in his 1,200 patient practice.  Federal prosecutors said Fata bilked Medicare out of as much as $91 million by prescribing unnecessary chemotherapy treatments to his patients, many of whom didn’t even have cancer.

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